The present disclosure relates generally to communication networks, and more particularly, to multicast Label Distribution Protocol (mLDP) node protection.
Traditional Internet Protocol (IP) communication allows a host to send packets to a single host (unicast transmission) or to all hosts (broadcast transmission). To support a demand to provide applications such as audio and video conference calls, audio broadcasting, and video broadcasting that involve high data rate transmission to multiple hosts, a third routing technique has evolved, multicast routing. In multicast routing, a host sends packets to a subset of all hosts as a group transmission. Multicast routing protocols have been developed to conserve bandwidth by minimizing duplication of packets.
Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) is a set of procedures by which Label Switching Routers (LSRs) distribute labels to support Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) forwarding of unicast traffic along routing paths set by an IP unicast routing protocol. Label Switched Paths (LSPs) are established to carry traffic that is identified by its Forwarding Equivalence Class (FEC). Extensions to LDP for the setup of point-to-multipoint (P2MP) and multipoint-to-multipoint (MP2MP) LSPs in MPLS networks are referred to as mLDP.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.